


Allura Red AC

by orphan_account



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone likes cupcakes, after all. Even zombie hunters. [the post-post apocalyptic bakery!au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Allura Red AC

To be fair, a zombie-themed bakery with a grand opening date of Halloween had seemed like a _fantastic_ idea. Of course, after the actual zombie apocalypse took place in mid-October, it just seemed tasteless. Jack Holden, first-time entrepreneur, would have gladly switched to plan two (NES-themed bakery) had his interior designer not been among the first to turn gray.

He got some strange looks throughout that first year, but Zombies, Bake! proved to be an inexplicably sturdy fortress of defense against the frothing hoards. By the time some semblance of civilization rebuilt itself around him, his reputation as a fine baker was established enough to earn him a steady flow of customers despite the somewhat distasteful nature of his shop’s design.

Of course, it wasn’t all daisies. There was little Ms. Hornsby, a God-fearing (now zom-fearing) lady who always wandered down the newly and aptly named Main Street in her Sunday best with a new nephew every week. She muttered prayers and covered her company’s eyes every time she passed Zombies, Bake! as though she suspected it of being ground zero of the virus. There were visitors (people hesitated to call each other tourists; even if the whole apocalypse situation was somewhat under control now, the institution of _tourism_ still seemed far too leisurely to be properly reinstated as a worldwide pastime) and the occasional new Abel resident who went wide-eyed and gasping at the sight of the shop, but a complimentary cupcake was usually all it took to win them over.

Everyone likes cupcakes.

The whole premise still wasn’t politically correct, not really, but Jack never claimed to live a life of political correctness. And it wasn’t _his_ fault that interior designers didn’t fare well in the apocalypse. His patrons would just have to accept his life of sugary goodness instead.

For the most part, they did. If only because his Blood Velvet Cupcakes were the best desserts within a hundred mile radius. Regardless, Jack begins to regain that pre-apocalypse conviction that this could be a massively successful enterprise.

It’s a conviction that was almost immediately shaken by one Eugene Woods, who seemed to storm into town for the sole purpose of cringing at the confectionery he was offered upon setting foot inside Zombies, Bake!

Jack had gaped a little. It just wasn’t possible.

Everyone likes cupcakes, after all. Even zombie hunters.

 

“Maybe you had a bad batch,” Sam says as he rearranges Jack’s furniture in preparation of the night’s Demons & Darkness game.

“It wasn’t a bad _batch_ ,” Jack says. He gives up on pretending to be productive and quietly, but emphatically, places a couch cushion over his head. “I tasted it myself. Besides, I don’t have bad batches.”

Sam stops in the process of pushing one of a dozen twenty pound bags of flour (the general store had a sale) out of the way. “You tasted his cupcake?”

“Of course I tasted his cupcake.” Jack interrupts himself with a melodramatic sigh. “After he left it half-eaten on his table.”

Sam stops trying to move the flour and begins rearranging them in a way that Jack can only assume is meant to make them seem like some sort of demon (or darkness). “Maybe he just hasn’t got much of a sweet tooth. Some people don’t like sweets.”

Jack gasps. “How very dare you.”

“I didn’t dare anything very much at all!”

Jack emanates as much disapproval as he manage for as long as he can manage while he pulls another cushion over to hug to his chest. “I guess all those zombie hunter stereotypes are true.”

“Zombie hunter?”

“You know, that they’re stoics. Devoid of emotion. Committed to the hunt and tight as--.”

Sam drops the bag of flour he’d been moving ever so slightly to the left. “The cringer is a _zombie hunter_? Jack. You realize this would be a very crucial piece of information to leave out.”

Jack blinks. “Occupation is crucial?”

“When it’s-- _zombie hunter_ it damn well is! Jack--.” Sam sits himself down on the coffee table and steeples his fingers as though he’s about to launch into a very detailed explanation about a very complicated concept. “Zombie hunters mean, _you know_.”

“I do?”

“Zombies, Jack!” Sam gesticulates so hard he nearly knocks over a pile of old wedding magazines. “Zombie hunters mean _zombies_.”

Jack manages to muster up a bit more disapproval than before. “Sam, zombie hunters don’t mean zombies. They don’t _conjure_ zombies with their presence. He’s probably just passing through and wanted a coffee, and a better cupcake.”

The bitterness the sneaks into the very end of his reasoning somewhat contradicts how reasonable the rest of his argument sounds, but it’s mostly drowned out by the timely buzz of the intercom anyway.

“Guys,” Janine says. “Let us up.”

Jack struggles free of his little cushion fort to find his keys. Before he can start the winding trek downstairs to weave through the closed shop to let the girls in (he insists they can take the fire escape, but _someone_ insists it isn’t safe; something about tetanus of the hands), he hears Janine continue,

“Listen to this. A zombie hunter just checked in for an undetermined number of nights.”

Sam says something about God and Jack mimes the defenestration of his just-passing-through theory.

 

They have some time to kill while Maxine rolls up a new character with Paula. They kill it by sitting around Janine’s feet and listening while she says, “Stop that. It’s quite--creepy.”

But _before_ she said that, she’d said, “His name is Eugene Woods, he wouldn’t use his hunter’s discount, and he has more firepower in the trunk of his car than I do in the entire armory downstairs.”

“Tell us more,” Sam says, inching forward as Janine inches back as much as she can while seated. “Is he like they say in the news?”

“Is he a crotchety _rat_?” Jack says.

Janine pulls her legs up and makes shooing motions at the both of them. “Personal space, gentlemen. He’s just a man.”

Behind them at the table, Paula and Maxine rejoice in a high constitution stat as though they either don’t care or already know about Janine’s newest boarder.

Sam doesn’t know, though, and doesn’t seem to have any intention of pretending he doesn’t care. His face is practically glowing with curiosity. “Did he say anything?”

“He asked if we did a continental breakfast,” Janine says, but only after Sam scoots back a step. “I told him Jack does good bagels.”

Jack groans. “He would _hate_ my bagels.”

In his periphery, he sees Maxine look up as though personally offended. “Why would he hate your bagels? You are still using my grandmother’s recipe, aren’t you?”

“Oh, _no_ , the recipe’s perfect. It’s not the recipe.” Jack frowns as the impressive tower of twenty-sided dice he’d made collapses. “He hates me and everything I stand for.”

“Don’t be silly, themed bakeries aren’t all you stand for,” Sam says. “You also stand for melodrama--oh. I see your point.”

Jack feels rather justified in pelting him with the bright, neon dice. Maxine clears her throat as she waves their finished character sheet.

“How did you offend that poor man already?” she asks as they settle around the table.

Jack picks his lucky die out of the pile and palms it so hard it begins to hurt the slightest bit. “I didn’t _offend_ him. What kind of zoms could he hunt if he were so delicate that a baker could offend him, anyway?”

They drop the subject and play for nearly half an hour before Sam says, “I bet he’s _cool_. Suave. Modest, too.”

“I bet you would know if you came into work today,” Jack says.

Sam splutters and rolls badly on his turn. “You knew I was in New Canton getting the new expansion pack! You _sent_ me!”

Jack doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response. (It _was_ a rather significant expansion pack--the first to feature the undead since the outbreak.)

“Are we done talking about Eugene Woods, ladies?” Paula asks when Sam opens his mouth again. “I’d like to see what we’re to do about the troll up ahead.”

After that, the only zoms or hunters to be brought up until their session’s end are fictional and suffer a weakness to high digits on small dice.

“Well, there’s also that he’s quite handsome,” Janine says as they break for the evening.

Jack contemplates closing the door forcefully on her, but instead nods sympathetically. “That’s the _worst_ part.”

 

Jack can’t claim to owe his recent success and acceptance exclusively to the open-mindedness of the Abel population. It might have had something to do with his removing most of the overtly zombie-themed decorations from his walls and really being a zombie-themed bakery only in name (with a handful of appropriately gruesomely titled menu items). There was also a fairly good chance of it being something to do with the local diner being abandoned by its jittery cook-slash-proprietor, leaving Zombies, Bake! the one reliable place for some decent breakfast.

And it definitely had something to do with the decent breakfast. Namely, the fact that it was so beyond decent that it could only be described as _brilliant_.

The point is, when Zombie Hunter Eugene Woods cringed again as he took a seat at the counter, Jack can’t think of a single good reason to great the guy with a smile. If he’s going to be such a negative Nancy about Jack’s shop, he could very well take his business elsewhere.

Jack doesn’t exactly frown, either, because he’s a professional at worst. (Well, no, he can be a lot worse, but he’s a professional _now_ damn it.) He just isn’t his friendly self when he gives the proffered post-apocalyptic ID card (which is government issued and seriously reads Zombie Hunter Eugene Woods right across the top) a cursory glance and takes an order for a black coffee and a plain bagel.

He’s on his way to fill the order with a frown working itself up onto his mouth (what an _attitude_ ; who does he think he _is_ ; etc.) when the guy stops him to ask, “With a--gray spread? If that’s cream cheese?”

Jack stops, heels, blinks. Referring to cream cheese as anything other than (and tackier than) cream cheese certainly isn’t something that he would have expected someone so obviously disturbed by the general atmosphere of the shop to do.

“Right,” he says, slowly. He writes down _gray spread_ just to make doubly sure he heard it right. “Okay. Coming right up.”

Jack could almost swear Eugene smiles, then, but he turns again and marches into the back before he can confirm this.

“Sam!” he says.

Sam pushes the goofy hat he insists on wearing while he works up out of his eyes. “What! I’m awake. I’m leavening!”

True to his word, he _is_ leavening, but Jack isn’t concerned about that. “I am troubled.”

Sam gives him a few confused blinks before he puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We know.”

“Excuse yourself,” Jack says very matter-of-factly as he pushes Sam’s hand off of his shoulder into some batter. “I didn’t mean in a general way.”

“Oh.” Sam furrows his brow as he begins to knead. “In a specific way?”

Jack nods. “Very specific. In a Eugene Woods sort of way.”

“ _Ooh_ ,” Sam says.

Jack blinks at him and dips his palm in flour before patting it lightly against Sam’s cheek. “Did you say _ooh_.”

“Uh, nope.” Sam clears his throat and then, in a voice that’s manly in the same way Mulan’s voice is manly, says, “I said, _oh_.”

Jack wipes his hands clean and takes a fresh bagel off the shelf and a clean mug from the dishwasher. He has customers (well, one customer) waiting and he couldn’t very well sulk in favor of doing his job. It would hardly be professional. He didn’t want to get started laughing at Sam’s Mulan voice, either, because he’d never stop.

“I understand,” he says.

“I thought you said you were troubled,” Sam says in a very obvious attempt at deflection.

“Got better,” Jack says and waves. He stops by the coffee pots out front to fill up the mug and whacks a dollop of cream cheese onto the side of the plate he’d picked up for the bagel before finding Eugene at a table by the windows.

“Thanks,” Eugene said, though the syllable trails off a little at the end when Jack sits himself down opposite him (excruciatingly uninvited).

Jack folds his hands on the table and smiles. “I’m Jack Holden, baker. I would like to discuss your damage.”

Eugene drops his hands to his legs. “I’m sorry?”

“Your problem, regarding--.” Jack waves at the air all around him. “--my humble abode.”

After a moment’s pause, Eugene brings his hands up onto the table again. “I’m--sorry?”

“You _cringed_ at my cupcake,” Jack says at a more hush-hush volume when his point seems to be trapped in some sort of chasm of understanding. “You’re a cringer. I don’t think I deserve that.”

Eugene’s expression twists and turns like he’s trying to climb his way out of the aforementioned chasm, and understanding seems to reach him when his eyes grow wider. “Oh. Oh, _no_ , I didn’t mean--.”

“Is it the name? The red-white color scheme?” Jack sits back and crosses his arms over his chest, rather petulantly. (He wouldn’t admit to sticking out his bottom lip, though.) “Coca-Cola has a red-white color scheme, you know. And for the record, I came up with the name _days_ before the apocalypse.”

Eugene opens his mouth, then closes it. Whatever words he meant to say seem to shift in his mouth before he finally says, “Did you really?”

Jack isn’t given enough time to decide whether that’s a genuine or rhetorical question before the front door chimes in a visitor. They both look up, but Jack looks right back down to business when he sees it’s only Sam’s pretend-girlfriend.

But then Sam’s pretend-girlfriend says, “I hear we’ve got a zombie hunter here? We’ve got a situation.”

 

The zombie apocalypse brought with it mass destruction and the nearly complete genocide of the human species. Cities crumbled and entire nations fell apart. Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a silver lining in the whole debacle. Not that anyone would really try.

And it wasn’t that Jack was trying for the silver lining, but he would have to admit that the calm of world peace (or at least this-small-pocket-of-England peace) was rather nice. Crime rates were impossibly low considering Abel had decked itself out with enough firearms to rival pre-apocalypse media descriptions of the state of Texas. Jack couldn’t even remember the last time a non-zom related incident occurred.

Turns out the shambling dead had a rather unifying effect on the uninfected population.

It was largely due to this unifying effect that Jack didn’t blink an eye when Alice came in with her guns out, when Eugene was up and gone with _his_ guns out, or even when he rounded back to his counter to grab his own shotgun (tucked away next to the spare creamer and straws) while his patrons casually started forming a barricade.

He does blink, however, when Alice returns to recount the situation (a hoard of a hundred limpers--slightly slower than shamblers, those guys--and crawlers approaching from the west where they’d taken out two sentries and brought down a fence) without the zombie hunter she left with.

“Where’s Eugene?” he asks as he distributes extra rounds with anyone who had come to breakfast packing.

“Who’s Eugene?” Alice asks. Sam appears behind her shoulder with the suddenness of a fairy godmother and whispers something in her ear. “Oh, _Eugene_. He’s working.”

“ _Working_?” Jack drops a few 12-gauge shells in horror. “That’s not what hunters do! They don’t go out there alone and defenseless, just _sacrificing_ themselves for us civilians. That can’t be right.”

“He’s not _alone_ , Jack,” she says as she holds her hand out for her share of ammunition. “Chris and Evan and Paula and Simon are out there, too.”

As though on cue, Simon emerges from the bathrooms in the back with a pistol tucked under his arms and his hands on his belt trying to get the buckle done up right as he walks. “Simon’s late. Simon needed to pee. Simon’s sorry!”

They let him through the barricade with minimal jeering. Alice spins Jack around until he’s facing inwards. “He’s also going to have you, on the comm lines. Go on, now. Get.”

Before he goes, still at least a little offended by how rudely this sudden zom invasion interrupted all his plans for the day, he hears, “And _you_ said they didn’t conjure zoms.”

Sam Yao was definitely not getting a holiday bonus that year.

 

Janine didn’t ask for the basement of her up-and-coming hotel/bed-and-breakfast/halfway house to be turned into the town armory. Likewise, Jack didn’t ask for his storage room to be turned into one of the town’s comm stations. But everyone made sacrifices to make Abel flourish (as much as anything can flourish with the undead having become a reality), so Jack let the tech guys install all their little blinking lights and consoles and learned everything there was to learn about being a good part-time communications officer.

As a good part-time communications officer, he puts on his headset (a rather brilliant gaming set, actually, liberated from the personal collection of one Sam Yao) and pulls up a seat.

“I’ve got you in Sector C, Mr. Woods,” Jack says once the system flickers into life. “Sound about right?”

There’s a moment of gunfire before Eugene asks, “Is that around the laundromat?”

Jack never did know why a dinky little town like Abel needed _N_ number of sectors (with N being the last sector, not an undetermined number), and he’s pretty sure at least half of them overlap, but they could never collectively decide on a simpler plan at city hall meetings. At least one person with a vote (by whom Jack meant that grumpy Ms. Hornsby) always accused the proposers of these simplified plans of gerrymandering, despite the utter lack of politics in and around the Abel area.

In any (preposterously complicated) case, Sector C, according to his hand-drawn map, was indeed around the laundromat. “Sure is, stranger.”

“Great. Sounds great.” Pause for another round of gunfire. “Jack?”

Jack, who wouldn’t ever dream of pleading mature, pulls a face at the comms console. “Yep. That’s me. The one with the hideously offensive shop.”

“Listen--.” Shots. “I wanted to explain, about that.”

“About how distasteful you find my workplace-slash-residence?”

Eugene says something colorful under his breath, punctuated by the sound of metal cutting through flesh. “Could you quit sniping at me for just a second here, please.”

“I’m not sniping at you.” Jack sits up straighter, then, concern tightening in his spine. “Is someone _shooting_ at you?”

“No! No.” More shots at close range. Jack relaxes and turns the volume down a little while Eugene sighs. “I wasn’t cringing at your workplace. Or residence. _Or_ your cupcake.”

Jack waits for a passing zom to stop grumbling, as though offended at not having Eugene’s full attention, before saying, “No?”

“Okay, maybe it was the cupcake--.”

“A _hah_!” Jack says. His moment of _I knew it_ is short-lived, though, quickly replaced by _what in the hell is wrong with my cupcakes_?

“But not because it was _bad_ , it was just _big_.” The next shot Eugene fires off sounds inexplicably frustrated across the comm line. “My sugar tolerance is--I can’t concentrate after--I just don’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

Jack gasps. Sam is doubly definitely not getting a holiday bonus this year. “So that warranted a _cringe_?”

“No! The want to not offend the cute boy bringing me a free cupcake wanted warranted a cringe.”

Jack gasps again for notably different reasons. “I’m _cute_?”

There’s a longer pause for gorey battle this time. Jack hears Simon and Paula play-bickering (with some genuine bickering from Paula’s side) as they pass each other, but he works himself so deep into thought that the sound barely even registers. He even almost misses Eugene finally offering another tentative, between-rounds, “I’m sorry?”

During the pause, Jack had ample time to let his completely undignified shock fade away into a nice mixture of mild surprise and amusement. He supposed, now, that he could come to terms with the existence of people who didn’t appreciate sweets the size of their face in this post-post-apocalyptic world. He supposed the whole shebang had been a misunderstanding, and that it would be quite silly to continue being offended that Eugene had been offended when that hadn’t been the case at all.

He supposed he _had_ been a somewhat childish nit this whole time, but that was neither here nor there now that an explanation had been had.

“And you cringed today because you thought you offended me with the not finishing your complimentary cupcake business,” Jack says.

“Yes!” Eugene is almost certainly nodding. “Yes. Exactly.”

Jack hums and waits for another pocket of silence to say, “I prefer rugged, but explanation accepted anyway.”

He hears Eugene laugh, followed by the faint sound of Evan saying, “Are you _laughing_ , man,” and finally wrapped up by Eugene asking, “Would now be an appropriate time for a question, Jack Rugged Holden?”

Jack turns the volume back up. “Shoot, ‘gene.”

“I have a dozen zoms cornered behind your shop. Can you get your best shot out here?”

And maybe it wasn’t the exact question Jack was expecting, but there would be plenty of time for expectations to be fulfilled and exceeded later. He covers his mic and hollers for, “Sam-u-el! Bring me my gun!”

 

Even though the number of able-bodied fighters in Abel barely outnumbers the typical hoard, they’re a group with a good enough set of teamwork skills to get them through most messes unscathed. With the help of Zombie Hunter Eugene Woods, the zoms hardly even made a mess. (The clean-up crew, led by the ever pristine Ms. Hornsby, was still assembled after the undead were properly re-dead-ed, and of course she placed the mess at Jack’s back porch at the very bottom of her priorities list.)

During the lull while the town is either cleaning or recuperating, Jack finds a dustpan to start sweeping up the mess of flour left on his floor after a stray Sam-bullet ripped through a fresh bag. Alice and Chris hang around asking Eugene questions about his methods (it turns out that no, weather patterns don’t have anything to do with how he tracked the hoard) and his title (it’s mostly decorative, but the ID does get him past most security checkpoints and into most townships in the area). They don’t stay around for too long, joining a passing group marching outwards to recover the bodies of the fatally unlucky sentries by the town gates.

Eugene stays, moving out of Jack’s way once in a while as he sweeps. “Need a hand down there?”

Jack shakes his head and waves him back a little. “All good. Though if you want to grab the shovel in the back and start moving bodies out to the main road for pick-up--.”

By the time Jack finishes disposing of the floor-flour, Eugene’s returned with the shovel looking cleaner than it was before he started. (Squad B of the cleaning team, in charge of all possibly contaminated equipment, must have gotten to him.)

“Well, aren’t we handy,” Jack says. He sweeps the last of the flour (discounting the mess that’s still on his counters from when the whole bag _exploded_ ) into his dustpan and smiles, first at Eugene and then at his own handiwork, as he stands. “Thanks.”

“All part of the job,” Eugene says.

“Is it really?”

Eugene shakes his head and leans in to whisper, “I just thought it’d sound nice.”

Jack is about to agree that it does indeed sound very nice, but a stiffness in the way Eugene shifts as he moves to let Jack get to the trash bin draws his attention very suddenly and pointedly to a rip in his jeans. Jack drops the dustpan and gapes.

“Oh my god, your _leg_ ,” Jack says, pointing as frantically as anyone can point to the ripped fabric. “Does it hurt? Did it break skin?”

Eugene looks down at himself and knocks over a stack of pans in his haste to move back, shaking his head and bringing his hands up in a _wait_ motion. “It’s not what you think.”

Jack inches back and holds his broom up in front of himself.

“Jack, it’s--.” Eugene scuffs his boot against the floor, half-sheepishly and half-helping to gather up the flour that Jack had dropped into a pile. “I don’t have what you might call a leg, uh, there.”

There’s an appropriately long moment of silence before Jack relaxes his grip on his broom, more out of exasperation than anything else. “You know, I’ve heard my fair share of _don’t shoot, I’m not infected_ stories, but that’s just the stupidest--.”

Eugene pulls up the leg of his jeans and Jack blinks at the slighted scratched, dented prosthetic.

“Oh my god,” he says again. “Oh, wow. Is it inappropriate to be really elated about your limb deficiency? I mean--what I mean is, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry. How did it happen?”

Eugene laughs, which Jack takes to mean he isn’t horrendously offended (for what would be a very valid reason this time). “It’s more of a third date story, I think.”

Jack drops his broom entirely, then, and pulls off his slightly blood-stained apron. “Then we’d better get started.”  
  


* * *

_Allura Red AC_  
the post-post-apocalyptic bakery!au  
jack/eugene, and company

* * *

  
With Eugene needing to return to a hospital where they could actually repair his prosthetic (Abel’s beloved Maxine is brilliant, but it just isn’t her field of specialty) and Jack leaving town to spend the holidays with his family (and subsequently stranding himself there for a solid month due to a lack of reliable transportation), it’s half a year before they have their first proper, in-person date.

“This has got to count as the third date, at _least_ ,” Jack says as he brings a soufflé (an appropriately small, low-sugar soufflé) over to the coffee table for dessert. “Those late-night ROFFLENET calls have to count for two. So, story-time?”

Eugene makes room for Jack to sit back down on the couch before he holds up last November’s issue of _Brides_ magazine. “I think I need to know about this, first.”

“Hey! Those were under the couch for a reason!” Jack wrestles it away and smooths back the cover before tucking it away in hiding with the others. “They’re just for cake designs, anyway.”

“Cake designs,” Eugene says knowingly. He laughs at Jack’s grumblings until he finds a spoon placed none too carefully in his mouth.

“Shush.” Jack pulls the soufflé in closer. “Try this. It’s practically sugarfree.”

“‘anks,” Eugene says, muffled around a mouthful.

They take their time with dessert, Jack taking time between bites to finish the story of the lichen swarm situation in last week’s Demons & Darkness session. Over coffee, which he’s convinced Eugene to take with a splash of creamer, he cuddles in close and says, “It’s not that I want to pry, about the accident.”

Eugene stops mid-sip to look down at him.

“I don’t need to know the gory details,” Jack goes on. “But I like you and your complete lack of a sweet tooth, Eugene Woods. I think I’m entitled to worry about you out there, saving the masses and risking your own superhero life.”

Eugene balances his cup between one hand and the armrest as he connects the dots of Jack’s cheek-freckles with his free hand. “I do hate to make you worry.”

“Uh-huh,” Jack says. “At the risk of being a big ol’ trite baby, what’ll I do if you get yourself hurt out there--or worse?”

“That’s a very good question,” Eugene says as he moves to work on the other cheek.

Jack wrinkles his nose. “I get the feeling you aren’t taking this very seriously, ‘gene. I don’t appreciate--.”

“Janine’s offered me a job down at the hotel,” he says, interrupting. He covers Jack’s eyes carefully with his hand. “She needs the help since they’ve expanded to two buildings.”

Jack thinks his heart skips a beat, partially because of what Eugene’s saying and partially because Janine’s new real estate acquisition came from the departure of one Ms. Hornsby. (He still isn’t quite finished rejoicing over that miracle.)

“And my contract is up in a month, so--.”

Jack pries Eugene’s fingers apart and peeks one eye out. “Really? Isn’t changing occupations more of a--twenty-sixth date thing?"

Eugene, to his credit, does not comment on how specific a number twenty-six is and instead simply smiles, nods. “Really and truly. Besides, if we count our every-other-night ROFFLENET dates, we’d be way overdue for an occupation change.”

Jack kisses him so much that night that Eugene claims to be getting light-headed from a contact sugar high. “Then it’s a good thing you don’t need to focus on much of anything but me right now,” Jack says with a giddy little grin. “Think you can manage that?”

“I’d say it’s worth a shot.”


End file.
